The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/top-statistician-u-s-census-is-being-sabotaged

by hhs • 6 years ago

142 146 6 years ago

This means [it eliminated] literally a third of the time allocated for the Census Bureau to knock on doors, to try to enumerate the hard-to-count individuals, which happen to be African Americans, Latinx populations, immigrants, people in heavily transitory situations, tribal lands, some Asians.

Random question but why would some races have more trouble than others responding to the census? Is it more to do with poverty than race? Or is there a cultural distrust of the census that aligns with race?

Retric12• 6 years ago

Poor people move around vastly more frequently and often end up temporarily sharing living spaces.

TheAdamAndChe4• 6 years ago

Sounds like it's not discrimination against race then, but of economic status. The disenfranchisement of poor people.

0_____0• 6 years ago

I came across a census worker in Portland who was doggedly trying to track down a former tenant of the house I was staying at. Having knocked doors I appreciate the hustle and tenacity the people on the ground for the census have.

bo1024• 6 years ago

There are many reasons. They discuss poverty in the article. I would agree with cultural distrust of government officials. And very importantly, everything around the citizenship question/issue.

The notion of these counts ever being used for enforcement — basically targeting high population, low citizenship-count blocks for ICE raids or whatever — that would be really, really problematic.

Stepping back, think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people, that is also going door to door and trying to establish records of who everyone is and where they live. Because of the bad optics of this, the US census has traditionally been extremely independent from law enforcement. The government has recently been attacking this barrier e.g. with the citizenship question and other things discussed in the article. Historically speaking, you might argue marginalized groups in such scenarios would be foolish to trust the census.

TheAdamAndChe4• 6 years ago

think in general about a government that wants to target, arrest, and deport certain groups of people

Yes. They are deporting people who didn't come into the country legally. Its important to have an accurate count of citizens in the country since that's who votes. There is an upcoming Supreme Court case that will determine if non citizens should be counted for House representation.

You may not agree with it, but it is important to know. With that said, I don't think ending the census early is the right way to handle this issue at all, it's just slimy.

solstice• 6 years ago

Dutch census recording religion enabled the Nazis to quickly round up the Jews living there a few years later during the occupation

WillPostForFood• 6 years ago

Because of the bad optics of this, the US census has traditionally been extremely independent from law enforcement. The government has recently been attacking this barrier e.g. with the citizenship question

Two points on history and tradition. The census was originally carried out by the US Marshals. That should indicate the importance and weight of the project. The citizenship question was part of the census until 2000 (1950 short form, 2000 long form).

If you are using the census to distribute voting power to states, and the distribution is based on count of citizens, not people, then it is a fair question to ask.

tsjq3• 6 years ago

Poverty, mainly. The article mentions:

If you’re hard to count, you’re hard to count. The people who are hardest to count, the ones we worry most about in terms of undercount, are the same folks whose families don’t have food at night or don’t have a job. They’re worried about getting tossed out because they can’t make the rent. Or they’re ill and don’t have health insurance. Those folks tend not to have participating in the census at the top of their minds because they have basic needs that have to be met — for themselves, their children and sometimes for their parents and grandparents.

watwut• 6 years ago

American blacks were more hit by corona virus for example.

American black are incarcerated more often which affects whole community. Ex prisoners and their families have unique housing stability problems.

Their family structure is different - more single women with or without children as males are not available. Also, more tight communities. Less of nuclear family more of extended family.

White people live more segregated per socioeconomic class, black mix more. Blacks and white are segregated anyway, so whatever you do you are not reaching both.

parsimo2010• 6 years ago

Statistician (but not a Census statistician) here with a few answers:

Black people have a higher than average non-response rate, even controlling for income, possibly due to a cultural mistrust of government institutions (for good reason).

Recent immigrants may not be able to read the language the census was mailed to them in, and may also be hesitant to respond due to fears of deportation- the point of the census isn’t to hunt down illegals, and people here legally shouldn’t be deported anyway, but the current administration hasn’t done much to reassure people. These effects will apply in differing amounts to Latino and Asian communities.

Finally, the bulk of the census is conducted by mail, and it takes a while to complete. Families without a permanent home might not be counted because they are only temporarily living with another family when the census arrives at that house, or they might be moving between addresses so that they aren’t counted in the response by any household at those addresses. This also disproportionately affects poor people and minorities.

And at least for me, I only received instructions in the mail telling me to do the census online. Not all families have easy access to the internet, and some just can’t be bothered to take the time to respond. This again disproportionately affects poor people and minorities.

To try to counteract these problems, the Census hires people to walk on foot and get responses from low coverage areas. But if you cut down on that effort, you’re going to miss some. One of the results of this could be that the census shows fewer poor people in some cities which will affect government funding decisions. But the tough part for a statistician is showing how much time is needed to walk around and get the coverage that you desire (and how many people you hire to do it). You can make some relatively small changes to your assumptions and get different answers. But cutting the time by a third is a pretty dramatic cut, so without looking at the details, I’m guessing that the coverage has decreased. That’s generally a bad thing since a census is supposed to be a full count of the population and not a sample.

Edit: I’ll also tack on a more nefarious interpretation than just using the Census to cut federal aid money to some cities. The Census is also used to portion electoral college votes for presidential elections. Because of the communities that are affected by this undercoverage, states that normally vote Democrat are more likely to lose votes than states that normally vote Republican. So this could make it easier for a Republican president to be elected in the next couple elections (the votes for the current election will not change however).

Gaelan• 6 years ago

And at least for me, I only received instructions in the mail telling me to do the census online

FWIW, I believe the Census Bureau sent either an online form or a paper form, depending on the prevalence of internet access in your area. I think they would also follow up with a form in the mail if you didn't respond online.

specialist• 6 years ago

"Families without a permanent home might not be counted because they are only temporarily living with another family when the census arrives at that house, or they might be moving between addresses so that they aren’t counted in the response by any household at those addresses."

Apartment living is also a big factor for postal balloting. Security of mail boxes, inconsistent updates for forwarding addresses, etc.

gjm11• 6 years ago

I'm not sure it's true that

states that normally vote Democrat are more likely to lose votes than states that normally vote Republican

because it could be true (1) that individuals who vote Democrat are more likely to go uncounted but (2) that states that vote Democrat are not more likely to be undercounted.

A few (totally imaginary) mechanisms that would do this: 1. Suppose Democrats who are surrounded by Republicans tend not to respond to the census, but everyone else does. Then you'll undercount Democrats, but mostly in places full of Republicans. 2. Suppose rural Democrats tend not to respond to the census, but everyone else does. Then again you'll undercount Democrats, but mostly in more-rural states, which tend to lean Republican. 3. Suppose poorer people (however they vote) tend not to respond to the census, but everyone else does. All else equal, richer people are more likely to vote Republican, but richer states are more Democratic. (I think Andrew Gelman's "Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State" talks about this.) Then Democrats will be undercounted more, but Republican states may be undercounted more.

I don't know whether mechanisms with this sort of counterintuitive property are actually responsible for enough of the census-counting difficulties to produce that paradoxical outcome, but it doesn't seem obviously impossible.

(Of course, if what we're considering is the nefariousness of possible motivations, then what matters isn't whether such mechanisms actually do do that, but whether the potentially-nefarious people in question expect them to. That's a different question and my guess is that they probably don't even if they should.)

zaroth• 6 years ago

Q: Do you have any sense for how many people might have been counted had the census efforts continued to Oct. 31?

It’s not going to be much. If you’re hard to count, you’re hard to count. The people who are hardest to count, the ones we worry most about in terms of undercount, are the same folks whose families don’t have food at night or don’t have a job. They’re worried about getting tossed out because they can’t make the rent. Or they’re ill and don’t have health insurance. Those folks tend not to have participating in the census at the top of their minds because they have basic needs that have to be met — for themselves, their children and sometimes for their parents and grandparents.
Because of those things that those people have to deal with, you actually could have extended the time for another month on top of that and you’d only get marginal gains. The census was already in a tough position. It would definitely help to get as much time as possible, because as people become acquainted with how to deal with Covid, they can do the grassroots effort that’s needed to get people to participate. But it’s going to be a marginal increase. At the end of the day, the die has been cast for quite a while: There are going to be undercounts of communities of color. The only question is how large — and is it so large that action needs to be taken in the form of litigation or legislation.

laverya• 6 years ago

I'd really like to know how large the undercount is estimated to be. Is it 1%? 0.1%? 0.01%?

Because that changes how I think of this. If you've undercounted LA county population by 1,000 that's a completely different beast than 100,000.

NelsonMinar6• 6 years ago

Among other things, safety for minorities. The census is supposed to be secret and never used for any sort of law enforcement, etc. But in our living memory that protection was abused. The US census was used to help round up Americans of Japanese descent and put them in concentration camps in the 40s.

It'd be nice to think that could never happen again. But then you had the Trump people literally trying to put a citizenship question on the census despite every expert saying it was a mistake. The intent was clearly to intimidate (we have this in writing). The question ended up being left off but the damage was already somewhat done.

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/17/us/report-says-census-bur... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/03...

tsjq3• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/ZuQ9n

Retric12• 6 years ago

Trying to sidestep democracy is how you end up with armed revolt. I wish both sides would realizing their destroying people’s faith in the system and how quickly that can destabilize everything.

tonetheman• 6 years ago

Ha be really clear dude in this case, in this article it is not both sides. It is solidly the current administration and no one else. Our current party in power has done this.

So to retype what you said more correctly. "I wish the Republicans would realize they are destroying..."

wwwwwwwww• 6 years ago

Nobody is destroying anything.

This sounds more like institutional interests being defended by those who work in the institution that is forced to be more efficient. Many will complain, and scream exaggerated warnings. But in the end, it will help to make things better.

BoiledCabbage• 6 years ago

I wish both sides would realizing their destroying people’s faith in the system

And I wish people would stop saying 'both sides' when it's 95% only one side. That's the issue. One side is now against census so people aren't represented, restricting voting so people don't get a say, and people keep saying 'both sides'.

FeepingCreature2• 6 years ago

And I wish people would stop defending the other side in that 5% as if 5% was okay.

TallGuyShort4• 6 years ago

I don't understand the Democratic side here either. There's a question of citizenship, but census data is used to determine allocation of electoral college votes. The electoral college system being something that I support but that Democrats keep trying to undermine. Yeah if you come here undocumented, or illegally, there's pretty natural consequences. I don't think anyone should ignore that. And they seem to want undocumented immigrants to be treated at the same level as legally naturalized citizens, but they rarely take any opportunities for immigration reform and the state of immigration enforcement under Obama wasn't so much better than Trump's that I yearn for the return of a Democratic presidency. So yeah - both sides erode my faith in the system. Just because I think one candidate in this election is worse doesn't mean I'm not angry at the pathetic counter from the Democrats.

Retric12• 6 years ago

It might not be close to 50:50 but it’s not 95:5. Less tainted is still tainted.

When I say both sides, I mean both sides. Gerrymandering to give minorities districts for example does the same thing to undermine people’s faith in the system. The goal should be to outlaw gerrymandering not find some way to allow it to be useful politically.

Should people in DC maintain the right to vote? IMO they should, but it’s become a political issue not a democracy issue.

vvG94KbDUtRa• 6 years ago

There's a lot of things you can "both sides" but only one side is undermining democracy because their positions are unpopular.

refurb2• 6 years ago

Whose positions are unpopular? Last I checked most of the elections are pretty evenly split at the national level (+/- 10%).

CyberRabbi2• 6 years ago

From what I can tell, a second (third?) census extension is being denied. It’s not that the census is unusually being cut short. I got a different impression from this article.

learc833• 6 years ago

The census bureau was original granted an extension that has been rolled back. It's not being cut "unusually" short, but the pandemic drastically impacted the census bureau's ability to do their work, and we are giving them less extra time than they say they need.

ghufran_syed• 6 years ago

What government agency has ever said they need less time or less money? So giving them less than they say they need is the normal state of affairs for government agencies.

The only difference is that now the aggrieved bureaucrats have a receptive audience in credulous journalists who are always ready to write a story about how the current administration is "ending democracy" if they don't do exactly what the bureaucrats want. So you would expect right wing media doing stories on how the military, the VA or the border patrol is underfunded or has had excessive "political interference" during Democrat administrations, and left wing media (which is 95% of the "mainstream" media on the US) would be expected to say the same about different parts of the government with a republican administration.

Just normal politics at work - doesn't mean the stories aren't important, but let's keep things in context.

mkl2• 6 years ago

I'm surprised they're not just cancelling or postponing it. In 2011, earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, displaced thousands of people. The national census scheduled for the following month was cancelled, and a replacement was later organised for 2013. I think the theory was that delayed statistics were better than unreliable and incomplete statistics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_census#History

GavinMcG2• 6 years ago

It was significantly delayed in starting, because of the pandemic. Failing to extend a pre-pandemic deadline is leaving less time than usual.

learnstats2• 6 years ago

An extension that is agreed and then revoked would completely ruin the plans of almost any project. It is unusually being cut short.

TheJoeMan• 6 years ago

Exactly! They’re trying to phrase it as “cut it short” when in reality it’s “not drag it out forever”.

VLM• 6 years ago

I realize for political reasons we have to only support one side via extreme sophistry, essentially the whole topic is a giant dog whistle test to make sure our community is politically pure.

However its VERY hard to ignore the reality that essentially 100% of the US population has no difficulty, on average, kinda paying electric bills and property tax bills and phone bills.

Part of the sophistry is pretending that no non-white people are capable of responding to documents mailed to them and as such will be entirely disenfranchised. However, the actual percentage simply cannot be that high as 73 percent of households have satellite or cable TV and thus are at least occasionally responding to mailed documents. 73 percent of the population isn't even white anymore.

I mean, yeah, as a political purity test we can rally around Orange Man Bad and try to one up each other in our two minutes hate to eliminate diversity of opinion while encouraging groupthink, but reality is so far from the politics in this particular situation that its hard to play along. And if an individual can't stomach the extreme virtue signallers, may as well join the reality-based community and just vote Trump. So ironically I don't think this topic is a PRODUCTIVE purity test even from a purely leftist perspective.

Schiendelman4• 6 years ago

You’re so wrapped up in buzzwords you’ve lost the real conversations.

rc_mob2• 6 years ago

What a goofy comment

stdbrouw2• 6 years ago

You seem to be extremely certain of your position and seem to find it impossible to believe that Robert Santos, the statistician in question, could have any motive other than a political one in sounding the alarm. However, "if people can pay their electric bill then surely they can respond to the census" is not a fact and it's not a logical argument, it's just your gut feeling, which you seem to find a superior source of truth to what experts are saying. Why?

woo494• 6 years ago

Robert Santos works for the Urban Institute which the LA times has called 'leading liberal think tank'. [1]

It's impossible to read a comment about the census without looking at the political affiliation of who makes the comment.

It's also unfortunately that articles like this don't make these affiliations clear. Gives fuel to 'fake news' and 'liberal media' arguments.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/1988-06-12/news/mn-7095_1_urban-...

SpicyLemonZest2• 6 years ago

I can imagine neutral, nonpolitical commentary on the census process, but that's not what Santos is offering. He says that the census wouldn't have been fair even if the count had been extended, due to factors such as "the public policy climate" and "toxic immigrant policies".

pjc50• 6 years ago

Not paying your electricity or cable bill may result in denial of service. Not responding to the census has no obvious consequences.

colejohnson66• 6 years ago

Technically, it’s a federal crime to refuse to respond. It’s just that no one has been prosecuted for not doing it in decades.

croissants• 6 years ago

However its VERY hard to ignore the reality that essentially 100% of the US population has no difficulty, on average, kinda paying electric bills and property tax bills and phone bills.

"essentially 100%" is an overstatement. Federal Reserve data (see e.g. Figure 12 here [1]) consistently shows that quite a few Americans have difficulty paying bills. For example, ~25% of surveyed Americans with a high school degree or less said they couldn't pay that month's bills. That number gets smaller with more education but is always 50-100% larger for black and Hispanic people.

It seems reasonable to me that people juggling various overdue bills might not prioritize responding to a census that has 0 short-term positive impact. It also seems reasonable to me that we make an extra effort to count these people since the point of the census is to count everybody, not just people who are easy to count.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-economic-we...

NelsonMinar6• 6 years ago

It's alarming to see white supremacists arguments being made on Hacker News.

ccaleb• 6 years ago

This is only tangentially related, but I think it provides important context to this discussion about the motives of those involved.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-que...

woo494• 6 years ago

Both sides have ulterior motives.

Counting illegal immigrants in the census helps Democrats because liberal states have more of them. This is just a fact. You may think we should still count as many of them in the census, that's fine. But don't pretend there is no issue with one side of the argument.

Mentioning motives of one side but not the other is naive. It also prevents us from having a real conversation about the trade offs at hand.

eganist3• 6 years ago

Counting all people who live in the United States of America as well as the distribution of people is the mandate of the Census. The status of said people is irrelevant - taxes are still paid, infrastructure decisions must still be made, etc., so whether any one side benefits more than the other by sticking to the letter of the mandate is irrelevant.

When deviating from the mandate, it's important to consider motives. When aligning with the mandate, unless it's clear that the mandate is ill-formed (which it isn't in this case for the reasons I've given above), motives for enforcing the mandate are, as said above, irrelevant.

ComputerGuru• 6 years ago

But that’s the whole point of the census. I agree Democrats wouldn’t care if it weren’t politically beneficial, but in this case their interest and the law coincide. Everyone, legal resident or not, should be counted. There’s zero legal /constitutional question about it. If you’re going to get angry every time someone does the right thing for the wrong reasons, I am afraid you’re in for a lifetime of disappointment.

Now if Democrats were trying to increase census coverage in Florida, Texas, NY, and IL while playing games to get census takers to skip traversing the vast emptiness of Montana and Wyoming, I’d agree that you have a point. But that’s not the case.

hn_throwaway_99• 6 years ago

TBH, I don't think it really matters. I mean, take voting for example. Democrats have a clear ulterior motive to expand voting, Republicans have a clear ulterior motive to make voting as difficult as possible.

But, TBH, I don't really care much about their motives, because in a democracy we should be trying to get the most eligible people as possible to vote. Republicans are trying to prevent people from voting because they believe the more voting is expanded, the harder it is to get a majority of people to vote for them. Well, tough shit.

To see what has happened in Texas, with dropboxes limited to one-per-county, I feel like the previous argument against voter fraud has kind of gone out the window, and now it's just blatant - there is no rational reason the giant county that contains Houston should be limited to the same number of dropboxes as a rural county with orders of magnitude fewer people.

atoav• 6 years ago

Not American but I think a census should reflect reality. This means: which people (regardless of legal status) are currently living in an given area.

How this then translates into policy is an entirely different question, but essentially misrepresenting what should be objective reality for cheap political points is asking for trouble. A bit like closing your eyes: it doesn't make things go away.

maxerickson• 6 years ago

That's not an ulterior motive, it's a direct motive for counting everybody.

An ulterior motive would be expressing support for a counting method with a statement about the technical superiority of the method, but really preferring it because of some bias inherent in it. The "ulterior" part comes from the motivation being different than what is publicly expressed.

nonplussed2• 6 years ago

liberal states have more [illegal immigrants]

I was skeptical about this so I looked it up. Nevada and Texas are the top 2 states on a per capita basis. I'd hardly call those liberal states.

https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauth...

NelsonMinar6• 6 years ago

The entire purpose of the census is to count everyone. Citizens and non-citizens. Your attempt to make a "both sides" argument here is pitting the very constitutional purpose of the census against a racist party intent on suppressing representation for minorities.

censusthrowaway3• 6 years ago

Here is some inside info. I work for the Census. It is a highly dysfunctional organization. Nothing to do with current administration.

The various software the local offices use actively hinders the job of management and enumerators (the people who come to your door). Hundreds of and hundred of millions of dollars and incalculable time is wasted just due to this. Imagine the worst ERP or CRM that you have ever used, this is worse and approximately 250 offices use it across the country, and this inhibits the jobs of nearly half a million people.

Talk to any Area manager, Lead Census Field Manager/Field manager, Office Operation Supervisor, or Office Clerk. They will tell you how they have to fight the software to get their job done.

Truth is the Census could be done with half the people. There is plain incompetence in middle and higher management. Those making decision on software and marketing seem to have no understanding of the job those in local offices do. It is so bad local offices don't really have an accurate idea who even is still employed in the field working cases.

Why doesn't this change? Nobody wants to lose their job. Middle management wants numbers and to hit goals. It doesn't matter if the numbers are actually accurate. Often they will not be. Notes about cases (organizations we are trying to count their people/or individual housing units) pile up inside systems that nobody has time to read. It is easier to close a case then actually resolve it and accurately count people.

Not only is there no incentive to do the job correctly, it will actually get you in trouble if you do things right.

Yes this is a random throwaway account on HN. But to verify just ask nearly anyone who works for the Census. I hope to post more on this later when I have time. Feel free to ask any questions.

NelsonMinar6• 6 years ago

A big part of why Census doesn't operate better is the Republicans chronically underfund it. This entire census cycle was the Trump Administration's responsibility. If Census lacks the tools and capabilities to execute it, it's on them.

censusthrowaway3• 6 years ago

I am not a republican, but this isn't true. There is so much waste and inefficiency. The Census wastes billions of dollars right now. Again ask almost any Census employee about how much time an money is wasted. Not everything is Trump's fault, he isn't that capable.

mensetmanusman5• 6 years ago

In the future daily low-cost high-resolution images of the country could give a real-time accurate headcount.

Is that being discussed? Would be a good way to get away from the 10 year lag data and have real time information to make policy choices.

censusthrowaway3• 6 years ago

Upper management wouldn't know what that means. Can't even make a good app.

nine_zeros• 6 years ago

Things that you hear from Turkey or Brazil or Belarus or some other distant "third-world" or even "communist" countries are happening right in our own backyard.

If we were not the superpower country, we would have already got "sanctions" but no one can yet. But the next time America sanctions other countries for human rights or governance, rest assured they will laugh it off.

cs702• 6 years ago

Successful management of anything -- a startup, a corporation, or an entire country -- requires successful measurement.

Successful measurement requires collecting good, accurate data.

Sabotaging the census is tantamount to sabotaging the government's ability to run the country.

It's the sort of thing that in my mind should be able to happen only in poorly-run countries managed by corrupt regimes.

The leading statistician claiming that the census is being sabotaged, Robert Santos, was recently elected as President of the American Statistical Association. We should probably take his claims seriously.

I find it almost unbelievable that this is happening in the United States of America.

koboll• 6 years ago

I am a little skeptical about how dire this will really be. Census takers are allowed to guesstimate if non-responses reasonably make them believe they are undercounting:

In instances where the bureau is unsure of the number of residents at an address after a field visit, its population characteristics are inferred from its nearest similar neighbor (hot-deck imputation). This practice has effects across many areas, but is seen by some as controversial.[6] However, the practice was ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Utah v. Evans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census#Procedure

gvd• 6 years ago

Could they run a new census? Is there a rule that limits how often it is done?

The 2020 census is being ‘sabotaged,’ says leading U.S. statistician

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